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25 photos that brings you inside the stunning Alhambra in Granada

After telling you about my experience in Granada, today I bring you into an authentic wonder of architecture and history, declared Unesco’s Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1984: the Alhambra.
(I will not write here the history of this place as you can easily read it on Wikipedia.)

Instead, I want to describe it through the photos I took with my Leica SL and consequently through the emotions I felt, the environments, atmospheres, and details that struck me most.

Most of the photos were taken inside the Royal Palace, Palacio Nazaries, the most beautiful Islamic building in Europe, a series of rooms and patios in the most classic and sophisticated Moorish style. A real wonder.

Unfortunately, I can not write the aperture value for each shot because I used old and uncoded lenses, so the camera doesn’t show it.

The following first picture was taken by Mirador de San Nicolas at sunset, on a tripod, with an old Pentacon 135mm f2.8 with M42 mount, a lens that gave me amazing results on Leica SL.

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Conclusions and photography reflections

With so many tourists around, it is very difficult to take special pictures. Even wanting to insert the human element, which I usually love to do, I can not isolate it from others, aside from being, the tourist, not especially photogenic.

In this case, the only way to make the photo interesting is to use the cinematic technique of the “fifth”, a predominant element set in the foreground but out of focus, as in photo N.11, where the child makes almost unnoticed the presence of other people in the background.

Photo N.5, on the other hand, is the one where I managed to get what I wanted, that is to isolate and insert a distinctly human element in a frame that characterizes and identifies the place. I saw the image as soon as I entered that room, but I only had a few seconds to shoot, because then it was a continuous flow of tourists passing by, outside and inside.

For the rest, I have focused more on the beautiful architectural details, often placed above me and thus free from other disturbing elements.

About you, which picture from this series do you prefer the most and why?

I would highly appreciate your comments.

Thanks for reading,
Sabino